Things You Should Know About Hurricane Damage and Your Landscape

Sandy beaches, gently waving palm trees, pristine golf courses, stellar year-round weather, and gorgeous neighborhoods are just a few of the tantalizing traits that draw people to the Tampa Bay area. It’s a stunning place to live and a popular place to visit, and we love it with all our heart.

If Florida sounds like paradise to you, we’re right there with you. However, not everything is sunshine and rainbows–even in the Sunshine State. Storm season in Florida is very real, and the potential for damage from hurricanes is always a threat.

Whether you’re a residential homeowner in Tampa Bay or a commercial property manager in the area, understanding hurricane-proof landscaping and hurricane landscape cleanup is a must. By putting systems in place preemptively, you can limit damage to your property and make recovery much easier.

Hurricane Landscaping - How to Prepare Your Property for Poor Weather

Key Hurricane Landscape Cleanup Steps

After a hurricane hits, the recovery process starts immediately. While pressing matters–such as allowing emergency services to work uninterrupted, power to be restored, and so on–take precedence, returning your property to its former glory is a top priority.

Having a system in place to safely and efficiently restore your landscape after a hurricane is essential. It helps ensure that the potential for injury is minimal, debris is cleared properly, and the work done during hurricane landscape cleanup doesn’t create more issues.

Prioritize Safety During Hurricane Landscape Cleanup

Before beginning cleanup, take time to thoroughly evaluate the property to ensure everything is safe. Look out for broken or precarious trees and limbs, downed power lines, sharp debris, and so on. Once the area has been deemed safe (by authorities and your evaluation), it’s time to start your cleanup.

Tampa Landscape Recovery - Clearing Debris

Hurricanes leave loads of debris everywhere, and your property is unlikely to be the exception. From leaves and bits of trash to larger objects like branches, removing the debris from the landscape can be a substantial job.

Remember that the lawn is probably extremely delicate after a storm due to heavy rain and strong winds. Taking extra precautions to ensure you don’t further damage the landscape is essential, especially if machinery is needed to clear limbs or fallen trees. A cautious, professional touch can help remove debris without accidentally harming the remaining landscaping.

As you perform hurricane landscape cleanup, be sure to dispose of debris properly. Working with a professional landscaping service for your Tampa landscaping recovery ensures that the work will be done right and the collected debris will be disposed of as required.

Hurricane Landscapes - Dealing with Damaged Trees

With debris cleared, you can evaluate the health of your remaining plants and trees. Because hurricanes are accompanied by high winds, broken limbs and damaged shrubs are common. It is vital that these issues be addressed preemptively to prevent the damage from progressing or disease from setting in.

Prune and trim as necessary to ensure that the damaged plants can grow back strong and healthy. If the harm done to the plants is too significant to correct in an acceptable way, consider professionally removing them and replacing them with healthy alternatives.

Help Your Lawn Recover After a Hurricane

In addition to debris and damaged plant life, hurricanes can wreak havoc on lawns, especially if drainage is poor. Thanks to the heavy rainfall that accompanies hurricanes, your lawn can become soggy and waterlogged. This makes it susceptible to damage, disease, erosion, and other negative outcomes.

You can expedite drainage by lightly aerating areas where soil is compacted, physically pushing pooled water off of hard surfaces, and ensuring that your drainage systems are not clogged by debris.

Once any standing water is drained, thoroughly examine your lawn for storm damage. If any sections are beyond repair, it is best to remove them in favor of fresh sod. This helps your lawn recover quickly and limits the damage to those affected areas.

How to Create Hurricane-Proof Landscaping

Hurricanes are incredibly powerful storms, and nothing is 100% immune to their impact, but there are steps you can take to get your property as close to hurricane-proof landscaping as possible. By doing so, you can limit potential damage, make recovery easier, and help your landscape stay as healthy as possible through storm season.

Storm-Resistant Plants for Tampa Bay Landscapes

One of the best ways to prepare your property for Tampa Bay’s inevitable hurricanes is to invest in storm-resistant plants. While you can choose to landscape with hardy shrubs and salt-tolerant plants, the main concerns during a hurricane are the trees on your property.

Windproof trees for landscaping alleviate some of the stress associated with storms and bring you peace of mind. They also help protect buildings on your property and reduce the intensity of hurricane landscape cleanup by holding up better against strong winds than their less sturdy counterparts.

While not a comprehensive list, some of the best storm-resistant plants to consider for your Tampa Bay property are as follows.

• Foxtail, Sable, Solitaire, Coconut, and Royal Palm Trees
• Bottlebrush
• Live, Sand, Myrtle, and Red Oaks
• Crepe Myrtle
• Sea Grape
• Magnolia
• Red Cedar

Hurricane Landscaping Designs

The plants you pick to populate your property play a major role in protecting it from hurricane damage, but placement also matters. By strategically planting trees to act as windbreaks and avoiding placing wind-susceptible plants near buildings, you can craft a landscape that increases your property’s odds of escaping the next hurricane with little to no damage.

The precise details of this hurricane-proof landscaping will depend on your unique property, so it is best to work with a professional landscape service that has experience in the Tampa Bay area and can thoroughly evaluate your land before formulating a plan.

Managing Stormwater

Heavy rains and storm surges can quickly lead to flooding, especially if your property lacks effective drainage. When water sits, it can damage or kill plants, increase the likelihood of disease, and otherwise threaten the health of your lawn and plants. As waters recede, they can cause erosion, which can lead to a myriad of landscaping problems.

Investing in efficient, reliable drainage systems helps keep your plants happy and your landscape healthy. When it comes to recovering hurricane landscapes, proper drainage is a key component of success.

We strongly recommend working with an experienced landscape professional to evaluate your property and take the necessary steps to prepare your drainage system to handle the next big storm.

Preemptive Landscaping Services

Keeping your property in prime condition ahead of storm season can work wonders. From trimming suspect limbs to cleaning your drainage system, preemptive landscape maintenance does the work ahead of time to save you a headache after the fact. It’s far better to be preemptive than to play catchup after a hurricane.

Your landscape deserves preemptive protection from hurricane season. As Florida natives who've been in this business for decades, we know that it takes a holistic, detailed plan from design to maintenance to ensure the safety of your landscape. 

Are you ready to protect your space from the unique hurricane season Florida brings to the table? We're here to help. Fill out our contact form or give us a call to see how Landcrafters can protect and prevent issue for your landscape before, during, and after hurricane season.